Finally. The weather forecast and mine and hubby's days off have coincided and I think we will finally manage to test pitch our Maritsa 700 this Saturday.
I've looked at the vango video, but it seems to miss out vital parts. I seem to remember seeing a good video months back, but obviously didn't manage to save it - that would have been far too sensible, and searching YouTube didn't help me.
So can anyone recommend a good video to help us. This will be the first tent we have pitched. Ever. I've helped with awnings when I was much younger, but that was about twenty years ago, so I'm not sure it's really relevant.
For true authenticity we will also have two young children 'helping' us, and then demanding to go to the toilet at inappropriate moments. If we get through the day without killing the kids and still being married at the end of it, I'm going to count it as a success!
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RachIN76 - I have a Maritsa 500 which I pitched in anger for the first time last week. I was camping solo and I was really worried because they recommend 2 people to do the pitching.
So, I followed the CrossCamping method approach on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmMXna-g3OQ&feature=youtu.be. The approach they are using seems to work for all tunnel tents and for me it certainly worked really well even though there was only one of me and it was a bit windy.
We had this tent. We found it easier to put all poles in whilst flat on ground and then gather them up towards the back ( making sure you have pegged the back two corners). Then stand them up and slowly walk them towards the front and peg one guy rope at front. Hey presto, your tents up.
i have the 600 and i am literally not strong enough to gather the poles and walk them forwards, so we peg the back, put one pole in at a time, and stand each up up as we go along, which works really well for us - and is super quick. we lay out the colour coded uprights each side of the tent, my oh passes through the roof poles to me then i put my upright in (with hardly any pressure, and he battles with the ring and pin end (which is easy for him, i just cant do it!) lol
We've got the 700 and do the same as Lauren57. We found this the best way and can have the tent up in about 30 mins. Each time the time slowly gets quicker and the process becomes one worded confirmations "blue,yep, I'm in, me too, next"